It was on September 16, 1995 that Beast Wars first hit the air waves (Known as Beasties in Canada). To put that in perspective, the original G1 Transformers cartoon had premiered a mere 11 years before that.

The impact the Beast Wars series had on the Transformers as a whole is insurmountable. Within the Emmy award winning series were were introduced to concepts and terminology never before addressed in Transformers fiction, including two new factions, sparks, stasis lock, organic based Transformers that blurred the lines between machine and living beings, the concept of generational characters and legacy names for characters and for the first time ever a self contained story that was about the characters and their motivations and how they existed outside the bounds of modern human context.

Beast Wars brought us a totally unique and different story line, pushing the bounds of change in the theme of Transformers like nothing before it (and in many ways like nothing since).

Not only that, it brought us, for the first time, a gateway for a brand new generation of Transformers fans who’s first and only exposure to the brand was through Beast Wars.

While eventually, the story did wrap back around to its G1 roots and ultimately lead us to Beast Machines to close the chapter on the original Transformers “G1” universe (or a version of it), it was pioneering in every way imaginable from the complete re-imagining of the cast, the state of the art CGI animation of the day and to the serialized story telling where the events of each episode mattered and built into the epic storylines that, up until that point, was relatively unheard of in children’s animation.

So happy anniversary to Beast Wars! Thanks to all the creators, animators, writers, voice actors, designers and fans that have kept this strange new experiment alive and well all these years.

Greg is the owner and operator of The Allspark website and social media. Since 1999, The Allspark has provided up to date news, information and discussion about Transformers, Comics, Video Games and everything in between.